


I Guess This is Growing Up

by fruitstripegum



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: De-Aged Stiles, Feels, Other, Tumblr Fic, baby!Stiles, peter's not a bad guy really, polish speaking!stiles, short fic, toddler!Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 13:20:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4061521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitstripegum/pseuds/fruitstripegum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based off of this fic-prompt by steterblog on tumblr:<br/>Hmm how about de-aged stiles and polyglot peter</p><p>In which toddler stiles only speaks polish</p><p>And only peter understand him </p><p>I will say I've never thought of the Steter fandom and since Stiles is a baby throughout most of this fic there is no romantic attachment to him by anyone. And I went into some Peter feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Guess This is Growing Up

**Author's Note:**

> I will say I've never thought of the Steter fandom and since Stiles is a baby throughout most of this fic there is no romantic attachment to him by anyone. And I went into some Peter feels.
> 
> Or:
> 
> In the vague time after season 2 ends and the pack is small, they fudge a spell of some sort, Stiles is turned into a baby temporarily, and the pack finds out that Peter wasn't always such a huge jerk.

“Well, this was… not in the listed potential side effects of the spell,” Deaton unhelpfully informs room. 

Lydia and Allison have already stepped into the circle of runes to squat next to the small, pudgy figure sitting in a pile of oversized clothes in the middle of the pentagram. A small, dark-haired head and pale shoulders are poking out of the neck hole of the now ironic “you can call me baby” graphic tee. The toddler fidgets in the oversized garment, squirming around until he gets one arm free, his chubby fingers reaching out to grab at Lydia’s red hair.

“Well aren’t you the cutest little Stiles there ever was?” Allison asks the baby in a gentle voice.

“Honestly, I think he’s better this way,” Lydia tells the group as a whole. “He looks to be somewhere between eighteen and twenty four months. Should be able to walk, but not necessarily able to talk and–”

“Jeść!” baby Stiles shouts shrilly, cutting Lydia off.

“But of course Stiles would be an early talker,” she amends, “sort of.”

“Was that baby gibberish?” Scott wonders.

“It was Polish,” Peter says from a dark corner of the loft where he’s been, as usual, observing without making a meaningful contribution to the pack’s efforts.

“It seems,” Deaton begins, his voice still unsure, “that when our spell backfired, Stiles was de-aged to a point where he did not speak English.”

“Whoa,” Scott breathes. “I didn’t even know he spoke Polish like, ever. I think his mom did, but he never mentioned it.”

“So you’re telling us,” Peter cuts in, sarcasm dripping from every word, “that Stiles, who never speaks of his mother, never told you about something that they shared. Like how she taught him Polish as a first language.”

“Could you be any more unhelpful, Peter?” Scott growls.

“Actually, I think I could be the most helpful one out of the bunch of us right now,” Peter informs them, stepping forward into the circle, picking up the wriggling baby Stiles and setting him on his hip paternally. “Does anyone else here speak Polish? Has anyone else here ever raised a toddler? Does anyone else know what he should and should not be eating? How to comfort him when he’s crying and only understands the words his mother used to speak to him? Anyone?”

He takes a step outside of the circle, then another, moving past Derek’s low couch to a dark steamer trunk in the corner, soot blackened and never opened in anyone’s presence. Scott didn’t even think there was a key, in the few moments he ever spared the trunk a thought, but sure enough, Peter pulls one out from behind the leather cuff he wears around his wrist constantly and squats down beside the trunk, balancing baby Stiles on his knee as he maneuvers the small key into the hole, unlocking the trunk with a * _snick_ * and opening its creaking lid to reveal its contents. All the while, Peter has kept up a litany of indiscernible words aimed at baby Stiles in soothing, low tones. 

The whole pack is shocked, still positioned in the exact same places they were when Peter had first picked Stiles up, staring and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Peter’s free hand reaches into the trunk momentarily before reemerging with two small pieces of cloth: a tiny onesie and what Lydia tells the group is a cloth diaper, and sets about pulling baby Stiles from teenage Stiles’ shirt before expertly pinning the cloth diaper and maneuvering Stiles’ Michelin-man waving baby arms through the correct arm holes, sliding the garment over baby Stiles’ head and pinching the metal buttons together to reveal a fully dressed baby Stiles.

“He’s hungry, by the way,” Peter informs the group as a whole, returning to the still-motionless pack and depositing baby Stiles in Lydia’s arms. Baby Stiles has kept repeating the same word over and over every few seconds since the bizarre episode of paternal Peter began, his squeaky voice getting more and more agitated as time went on. 

“Food,” Peter reiterates, “he’s saying he wants food.”

Derek is the first one to shake himself out of the group stupor, literally shaking his head as if to clear it. “Deaton, how long is this spell supposed to last?” 

“Anywhere from a few hours to a few days,” Deaton tells him.

“Right,” Derek murmurs. “Well until then, Stiles is our responsibility. Peter, you’re in charge.”

 

++

 

The pack had, predictably, reacted poorly when Derek put Peter in charge. Scott had been worried about Peter’s motivations, Allison about his trustworthiness, and Lydia about his qualifications for watching over and caring for a baby.

“I’d say I was doing pretty well raising my own child before he was taken from me in the fire,” Peter had growled, his eyes flashing blue.

Lydia settled for double checking everything Peter did or recommended on Google before going through with his suggestions. She had gone out to procure a few more onesies and some age-appropriate food and bottles. Scott had made a makeshift bed for Stiles on the couch out of blankets and was currently playing a thrilling game of peekaboo with him on the floor. Peter was back by the blackened steamer trunk, peering in at its contents for a few minutes, before shutting and locking the trunk again. He brought over a small, soft stuffed wolf toy to where Scott was sitting with Stiles, handing it to baby Stiles, who promptly shoved its muzzle in his drooly mouth. 

Peter smiled, but his eyes were glazed, mind far away.

 

++

 

Lydia returns victorious a short while later, bags of baby food, fruits, diapers, and onesies hanging from her arms.

“You might have gone a little overboard,” Scott begins before Lydia’s harsh glare quiets him. 

“You try shopping for a toddler with only Google to help you!” she retorts. “I swear those ladies in Buy Buy Baby looked at me like I was on an episode of ‘Sixteen and Pregnant.’”

“Uhh, Lyds,” Allison says quietly, “I don’t think he needs a high chair if it’s just going to be a few days at most.”

“Babies require structure,” she informs the group. Deaton had left to return to the Vet Clinic, but Derek, Scott, Peter and Allison were still there. “So for the duration of Stiles’ toddlerness, we are going to give him the structure he needs to be happy. After all, it’s our fault he’s like this.”

They split the Stiles-related chores among them: feeding to Scott (”I think he’s wearing twice as much as he swallowed…”), cleaning to Lydia (”Don’t get used to this, Stiles, this is the only time I’m okay with seeing you naked.”), changing to Allison (”I’ve smelled dead bodies less potent than that diaper guys, someone else is doing that next.”) Derek and Peter were responsible for Stiles’ care throughout the night. Peter could be found talking to him in low tones when he thought no one was listening, and once, on the second night after everyone else had left to their respective homes, Derek caught him reading a tiny story book to a yawning baby Stiles in Polish, even going so far as to make the animal noises and throw his voice for the different speaking parts.

“You’re a natural,” Derek comments to his uncle quietly after they’d put Stiles to sleep on his pallet of blankets. Peters big hand was still resting on Stiles’ back, the warm weight comforting to the baby, who shifted and whined whenever Peter tried to take his hand back. 

“I did have a child of my own once,” Peter counters, his voice absent of its usual sarcasm and malice.

“I remember,” Derek replies. “Cal was a good kid.”

“He didn’t deserve to die like that,” Peter growls momentarily, cutting off quickly when Stiles begins to stir at the sound.

“None of them did,” Derek agrees, “but Cal was so young… I can’t– I can’t imagine what it must be like for you.”

Peter doesn’t respond. He places his hand back on Stiles’ back, resting his head against the back of the couch, slowly falling asleep beside the toddler.

 

++

 

“How do you know Polish?” Scott asks Peter on the third day after he takes the spoon full of mashed carrots away from Scott and begins feeding Stiles in a much more expert way. Scott notices with a grimace that much more food makes it into Stiles’ mouth under Peter’s attention than any of the other times Scott has fed him.

“I learned it,” Peter informs him unhelpfully.

“Yeah, but I mean, how did you learn it? Why?”

“I’ve made it a point to learn many languages in my lifetime,” Peter tells him. “Language is important. After the third language, picking up a new one is relatively easy if you have the desire, and a number of volumes in the basement library at the Hale mansion were written in Polish. The Austro-Hungarian empire was full of magic. Books of spells and beastiaries and other magical subjects were written by the people who would become a part of the nation of Poland. I thought it prudent to learn the language for my research. Knowledge is power.”

That was the longest unbroken monologue Scott had ever heard Peter utter without a death threat thrown in.

“But you know how to speak it, not just read it,” Scott presses.

“My wife, Felicia, was first generation American,” Peter reveals after a tense moment of silence. “She used to speak to our son in Polish. I learned so I could join the conversation.”

“Oh.”

Scott stands awkwardly while Peter continues to feed baby Stiles the mashed carrots, shifting from foot to foot, fidgeting. 

“Is there something else you wanted to ask, Scott?” Peter inquires evenly.

“No!” Scott almost shouts, before returning to a normal volume. “I mean, it’s just… When you were alpha, and even after you resurrected yourself, you had a ton of chances to kill Stiles… but you didn’t.”

“I didn’t hear a question in there, Scott.”

“I was just wondering…” Scott trails off. “Is it is because he reminds you of your son?”

Peter tenses infinitesimally. He’s so still he’s not even breathing for a moment. Right before Scott’s about to tell him to forget his question, he exhales a slow breath.

“My son would have been a few years younger than you are now,” Peter informs him. “Physically, the two probably would have looked very dissimilar. Cal had my eyes and his mother’s blonde hair and fair skin. She was human, you know. Cal was a born wolf, and would have had all of the natural strength that comes with that.”

He pauses, eyes flashing blue momentarily. 

“No, physically, Stiles doesn’t remind me of him at all.”

“Okay, I’m sorry I–” Scott begins.

“You’re right in your line of thinking, though,” Peter tells him. “Stiles is smart and resourceful and loyal to a fault. He’s what I think Cal would have been like.”

“Is that why you offered him the bite?” Scott presses.

“I offered him the bite because he did me a service and I thought– I  _still think_ – he would make an excellent werewolf.” 

 

++

 

It took two weeks for Stiles to re-age. The pack had created a fairly spectacular schedule to care for him, but Peter ended up taking most of the time slots, preferring to do all of the dirty grunt work that came with small children. After the first few days, the pack didn’t really mind. Peter appeared more human than he’d ever been to them, and Derek had told them he was almost back to the Peter he remembered from before the fire. 

When Stiles woke up seventeen on Derek’s couch with nothing but a small blanket to preserve his modesty, he’d almost flipped out at the sight of Peter asleep on the couch next to him. Scott had woken up from his spot on the floor and quickly told him about the past few weeks. Stiles had found his abandoned adult clothes, run to the bathroom for a quick shower, and stepped back out into the open loft to a full pack. They had all showered him with hugs, telling them how glad they were he was back. 

Peter was back haunting his old perch on the dark spiral stairs. Stiles broke away from the pack after a few minutes, heading over to the secluded corner.

“Hey man,” Stiles started awkwardly, his hand rubbing his jaw in a self-soothing gesture. “Uh, Scott told me you were a big help while I was, you know. I just wanted to say thanks.”

“It was my pleasure, Szczepan,” Peter said, his voice kept low. 

“Hey, how did you?” Stiles started to ask before switching gears. “How did you get the pronunciation right? No one ever does.”

“A lucky guess, I suppose.”

 

++

 

Things went back to normal, or as close to normal as Beacon Hills could get. Peter continued down the path he’d started on during Stiles’ de-aging extravaganza, as Stiles himself had begun to refer to it. (”I can’t remember a thing, but there was someone waiting on me hand and foot all day long, so it must not have sucked that bad!”)

He may not have had memories of his time, but he did have feelings. He felt like Lydia knew him more intimately than she would admit. He felt like he’d thrown up on Scott, a lot. Most surprisingly was how unsurprised he was to be valuing Peter’s insight on the troubles they encountered in the following months and years. Somehow, he’d stopped being someone that Stiles feared, and into someone he respected instead. He smiled when that thought crossed his mind and hummed a few chords from a song by one of Scott’s favorite bands.  _Well I guess this is growing up_.

**Author's Note:**

> In my own personal headcannon for this little drabble, Peter had a fling with Malia's mom a few years before he met/married/settled down with his wife Felicia. Talia pulled that fling/Malia herself from Peter's mind, he doesn't know about her, but he does remember his kid, Cal (name taken from the excellent fic Fly a Little Faster by mirrorkill) Malia is still around (and presumably still a werecoyote in the woods of Beacon Hills) at the time this fic takes place.


End file.
